Remote working is the new reality, and transactional work – provided by freelancers, contract employees or consultants – has increased exponentially. It is forecast that as much as half the labor force will be working independently and virtually by 2020.Most organizations are still grappling with how to effectively manage their virtual staff and how to effectively support and motivate them – an increasingly urgent task as more Millennials join the workforce, bringing changed attitudes to work satisfaction. This book, the fruit of the author’s three decades of experience planning and implementing remote working environments, provides expert guidance for anyone planning a shift to remote working, managing teams of teleworkers, or themselves working in a virtual team.Working Virtually is for the executive leading changes in an enterprise that is preparing for virtual work or seeking to improve current performance. It offers tools to assess readiness, advice on creating appropriate reward policies, and strategies to adapt performance management processes to be more team-driven and technology leveraged. Working Virtually is written to and for the virtual leader who wants to establish high performing virtual teams. It provides an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of managing a virtual team, offering a wealth of advice on creating the conditions for collaboration, motivating team members, and identifying and defusing problems.Working Virtually is for the professional who works remotely from home, on the road, or in an office with remote colleagues. It is for anyone who wants to succeed in this new work environment by developing skills and networks to create a sustained and satisfying career path.With this new edition providing a 360° view of the roles and objectives of all stakeholders in the virtual workspace, this book uniquely provides readers with a rounded picture of the policies, processes, work habits, and commitments needed to achieve the shared goal of high performance remote teams.

Virtual teams have been used to leverage scarce and distributed resources for many years. Expense reductions, health epidemics, air travel safety, and complex supply chains have only intensified this need. General best practices for leading and participating in virtual teams are well known but why are there still misconceptions about their effectiveness? What drives the notion that ?face to face is always better?? How can groups and individuals take the most advantage of virtual teams through the appropriate use of technology? Working Virtually: Challenges of Virtual Teams provides an in-depth, practical perspective on the growing dependence of virtual teams and how to best exploit them. Based on years of direct experience in managing and participating in virtual teams, as well as developing solutions to help virtual teams be more effective, the authors have provided unique insight that can be leveraged to help you get the most of your virtual teams.

Virtual Teams That Work offers a much-needed, comprehensive guidebook for business leaders and managers who want to create the organizational conditions that will help virtual teams thrive. Each chapter in this important book focuses on best practices and includes case studies and illustrative examples from a wide variety of companies, including British Petroleum, Lucent Technologies, Ramtech, SoftCo, and Whirlpool Corporation. These real-life examples demonstrate how the principles identified in the book play out within virtual teams. Virtual Teams That Work shows how organizations can put in place the structure to help team members who speak different languages and have different cultural values develop effective ways of communicating when there is little opportunity for the members to meet face-to-face. The authors also reveal how organizations can implement performance management and reward systems that will motivate team members to cooperate across multiple boundaries. And they offer the information to determine which technologies best fit a variety of virtual-team tasks and the level of information technology support needed.

"This book provides exploration of the opportunities, benefits and costs associated with virtual work, addressing several communicative, relational and practical issues associated with virtual work"--Provided by publisher.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this timely Handbook builds upon research and practice to discuss and assess what is currently known about virtual work and its evolution, given the increasing numbers of those working virtually.

The world is now your office! You can work from home, from a coffee shop, or even from the gym—but how do you keep on task and stay motivated when you’re alone. In Working Remotely, authors Mike, Holly, and Teresa discuss how to ward off toxic levels of loneliness, how to get what you need from colleagues spread across the world, and how to network and grow in your career when you are sitting in an office of one, plus many other topics that will help you survive and thrive as a remote worker. Mike, Holly, and Teresa use their different paths through Kaplan to help the remote worker figure out how to set up the right headspace for them. “Working Remotely paints a very real picture of what it's like to be a remote worker in an organisation... In contrast to most books on remote work which have been written with managers, business owners or freelancers in mind, Secrets of the Remote Workforce speaks directly to employees, guiding them through their day to day.” -Pilar Orti Director of Virtual not Distant “Working Remotely is a terrific map for helping employees who work remotely take charge of their own career. The authors have all survived and thrived as remote employees... While other resources focus on how to manage remote employees, this book highlights the power that employees have to drive success for themselves.” -Susan Cates, Strategic Advisor

Globalisation is quickly making the world smaller, but the work challenges larger. Colleagues and clients are diverse and work from different locations. So how do we stay connected, efficient and productive? What do we do to overcome technological, cultural and time challenges? With practical skills and effective techniques, Working in a Virtual World will help you to improve your business relationships, whether people are located on the next floor, in the next building or an entirely different country. This book gives you insights and hands-on techniques to make working in the virtual world work for you, including: communicating with clarity, using technology productively, overcoming time challenges, connecting with others, dealing with issues, being inclusive of diversity, working with cultural difference and leading effectively.

Virtual Work and Human Interaction Research uses humanistic and social scientific inquiry to explore how humans communicate, behave, and navigate in their new virtual work spaces, providing scholars and practitioners an opportunity to study virtual work from quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The books explores informal and formal communication, emotional, psychological, and physical labor, rewarding and punishing virtual work behaviors, group decision-making, socializing, and organizational change in a workplace without the physical and nonverbal cues that are taken for granted in traditional face-to-face work arrangements.

In March of 2020, the world workforce moved to work remotely - challenging the nature of what librarians accomplish while not being in their buildings and how libraries serve communities with their doors closed. While the initial move to remote work was forced, voices emerged that questioned why librarians couldn’t work remotely for extended periods of time as part of their regular jobs. Librarians are uniquely positioned to move themselves to remote work, while also maintaining connections to their patron base and their colleagues – but where to start? Stepping outside the traditional library space, librarians can carve out a space to work remotely while still retaining the ability to reach our patrons, provide access to quality programming, pave the way for libraries to share information, promote resources, and even lead change in their communities. With times changing and our profession adapting so quickly, this practical how-to guide will help librarians set up an office space, set a routine, and adapt, plan, create, implement, manage, and evaluate their programs and services to the best of their ability in order to unleash their library’s potential to engage and wow their patrons and communities. With worksheets and templates, anecdotes about what works easily and what might prove challenging, this book is ideal for today’s librarian.

This book will help managers and team members alike who are about to or have already started working remotely. It will enable managers to comprehend the challenges of managing remote workers and put strategies in place to overcome these, and will advise employees how to approach their work when doing so remotely.